It's shitty for the consumer, plain and simple. An extra burden is being placed on low-income consumers who had trouble affording services in the first place.

At face value it economizes costs for businesses - a blended tax is less paperwork, less accountants to pay, etcetera. That adds up to a lot over the course of a fiscal year. Ontario businesses will also be reimbursed for taxes paid on inputs, which again is very economical.

My question is this - you economize costs for businesses, which I'm all for, but you raise the cost of services by a relatively extreme amount. The price of and demand for services are inversely related. You increase the price of services, the demand goes down. In most cases the demand for services is extremely elastic. I'm not sure the economized costs for service businesses outweighs the decreased demand.